Christian Teachings About Communion

Pope Saint Sixtus I in the 2nd century: It is prohibited for the faithful even to touch the sacred vessels or receive in the hand.

Origen in the 3rd century: You who are wont to assist at the divine Mysteries, know how when you receive the body of the Lord that you take reverent care lest any particle of it should fall to the ground and a portion of the consecrated gift escape you. You consider it a crime, and rightly so, if any particle thereof fell down through negligence.

St Basil the Great: Communion in the hand is a grave fault.

The council of Saragossa in the 4th century: Anyone who dares to continue the practice of Communion in the hand is excommunicated from the Church.

Pope St Leo the Great in the 5th century: One receives in the mouth what one believes by faith.

The council of Rouen in the 7th century: Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywomen but only in their mouths.

The council of Constantinople in the 7th century: The faithful are prohibited from giving Communion to themselves.

9th century Roman Ordo: Communion is received on the tongue.

St Bonaventure: A sacrament whose matter is holy, that is, consecrated oil, in order to avoid any risk, its dispensation is entrusted to priests in general. And because of the consecration of the oil, it should be touched by none except consecrated hands.

St James of the March: He is no less guilty who hears the word of God carelessly than he who allows the body of Christ to fall on the ground through his own negligence.

St Thomas Aquinas: The priest is the appointed intermediary between God and the people, hence as it belongs to him to offer the people’s gifts to God, so it belongs to him to deliver the consecrated gifts to the people...Out of reverence towards this Sacrament, nothing touches it but what is consecrated, hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this Sacrament. Hence it is not lawful for anyone to touch it, except from necessity, for instance if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency.

Council of Trent: Now as to the reception of the Sacrament it has always been the custom of the Church of God for the laity to receive Communion from the priests…this custom proceeding from an apostolic tradition should with reason and justice be retained.

Roman Catechism: Christ, whole and entire, is contained not only under either species but also in each particle of either species. Each, says St Augustine, receives Christ the Lord, and He is entire in each portion. He is not diminished by being given to many, but gives Himself whole and entire to each...The body of our Lord is contained whole and entire under the least particle of the bread...As of all the sacred mysteries bequeathed to us by our Lord and Savior as most infallible instruments of divine grace, there is none comparable to the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist; so, for no crime is there a heavier punishment to be feared from God than for the unholy or irreligious use by the faithful of that which is full of holiness, or rather which contains the very Author and Source of holiness...[Sacrilege defined as] the unbecoming treatment of a sacred person, place or thing as far as these are consecrated to God.

Britain's Cardinal Heenan 2 February 1974: At one time it would have been unthinkable for anyone without anointed hands to touch the Sacred Species. In this century there has been a steady diminution of outward signs of respect for sacred objects. When I was a boy there was a scale of values. It was understood that anyone could handle a ciborium or monstrance, but only the priest could touch the chalice because it was consecrated. Until recent times we priests kissed each sacred vestment as we put it on, we genuflected before and after touching the Sacred Host. The new rubrics abolished the kissing and reduced genuflections to a minimum...the loss of outward marks of respect lead the simple-minded to lose their sense of reverence. Some have begun to ignore the Blessed Sacrament. They do not genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament and do not kneel in adoration when they come into church.

Pope Paul VI in his instruction Memoriale Domini: Holy Communion received on the tongue signifies the reverence of the faithful for the Eucharist...provides that Holy Communion will be distributed with due reverence...is more conducive to faith, reverence and humility...Communion in the hand carries certain dangers with it which may arise from the new manner of administering holy Communion: the danger of a loss of reverence for the august Sacrament of the altar, of profanation, of adulterating the true doctrine.

Pope Paul VI in his Mysterium Fidei encyclical: To cause particles of a Host to be dropped on the floor through negligence is a grave sin.

Fr Alfred Kunz: It is a moral certainty that there is a loss of particles by placing Communion in the hands at any given Mass. This loss of particles is an act of irreverence by the priest and he is bound not to do anything that would violate his conscience. This irreverence to God by losing particles is against the Divine Positive Law and therefore, regardless of its canonical status, cannot be done. And this is due to that fact that to drop a consecrated fragment of the Host to the ground is the same as dropping the consecrated Host to the ground. Even if done through negligence it is still a sin of sacrilege. The danger of irreverence is to be avoided by Divine Law. Not even the Pope can change this law.

Bishop Laise: With Communion in the hand, a miracle would be required during each distribution of Communion to avoid some Particles from falling to the ground or remaining in the hand of the faithful…Let us speak clearly: whoever receives Communion in the mouth not only follows exactly the tradition handed down but also the wish expressed by the last Popes and thus avoids placing himself in the occasion of committing a sin by negligently dropping a fragment of the Body of Christ.

Bishop Bernard Stewart of Bendigo: Children are known to have fiddled with the Sacred Host placed into their hands at Holy Communion; adults have been seen to pass the Blessed Sacrament from one to the other in a queue. Rightly does the Sacred Congregation ask whether such people who act like this really believe in the Real Presence of Christ. One must pass over in appalled silence the unspeakable abominations of demonism when the Sacred Host is sacrilegiously carried off to the satanic rituals of black masses. Sacrileges have occurred in the past and will occur in the future. But today the Holy See testifies that they are numerous and widespread; it also says that Communion in the traditional manner is a better safeguard against adulteration of doctrine and profanation.

Dietrich von Hildebrand, called "a 20th century doctor of the Church" by Pope Pius XII, wrote in an article entitled Communion in the Hand Should Be Rejected: There can be no doubt that Communion in the hand is an expression of the trend towards desacralization in the Church in general and irreverence in approaching the Eucharist in particular...Why for God's sake should Communion in the hand be introduced into our churches when it is evidently detrimental from a pastoral viewpoint, when it certainly does not increase our reverence, and when it exposes the Eucharist to the most terrible abuses?...Is it believable that instead of applying the most scrupulous care to protect the most sacred consecrated host, which is truly the Body of Christ, the God-man, from all such possible abuses, there are those who wish to expose it to this possibility? Have we forgotten the existence of the devil who wanders about seeking whom he may devour? Is his work in the world and in the Church not all too visible today? What entitles us to assume that abuses to the consecrated host will not take place?

Fr John Hardon in 1997: Behind Communion in the hand is a weakening, a conscious deliberate weakening of faith in the Real Presence. Whatever you can do to stop Communion in the hand will be blessed by God.

Mike Warnke, former satanic high priest of New York: US bishops that allow Communion in the hand are making a mistake as it allows satanists easier access to the host which they desecrate at their services.

When the Vatican gave the clergy permission to introduce Communion in the hand, the Bishop of the Diocese of San Luis, Argentina, Juan Rodoffo Laise, decided not to permit the practice in his diocese. He wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The reply was positive: Since you have judged unnecessary the application of the said permission for the territory of the Diocese of San Luis, your Excellency has wished to consult this Congregation of whether by this decision you have acted in derogation of ecclesial communion with the dioceses that have received the indult. As to this, you are informed by this dicastery that an attentive study of the documents of the Holy See in this matter shows clearly that you, in deciding to maintain immutable the tradition of distributing Holy Communion in the mouth, have acted in conformity with the law and therefore have not broken with ecclesial communion. In truth, Your Excellency has done no more than fulfill the duty demanded of every bishop by the instruction De Modo Sanctam.

Mgr Laise stated: Nowadays everything is de-sacralized. "God is dead," they say. But if God is dead, so is man. As you can see, man is worth nothing in contemporary society. From birth to death, his life is in constant danger. Will he be allowed to be born? Will he be helped to die more quickly than Providence intended? And between those times, what will happen to him in a world where people talk more about war than about peace? Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, if man no longer counts for anything, that is because he no longer sees anything as sacred. I believe that your association has a mission of very great importance in promoting the traditional Roman Rite, which is, in its own field of liturgy, the most sublime manifestation of the sacred; through its rich and beautiful ornaments; through its language, which does not belong to the everyday; through all the signs and symbols which clearly show that, beneath all that, there is a reality which must be respected and adored. The desacralization of the liturgy, the banalization of the rites, the distribution of Holy Communion in the hand have all contributed greatly and in a culpable manner to the desacralization of the Holy of Holies: God, and the worship which mankind must give Him by their obedience to the first three of the Ten Commandments. May the Most Holy Virgin, who bore in her sacred womb the Word of God--she who is entirely pure and entirely consecrated to her Lord--may she give you, firstly to you priests, a true sense of the sacred, a true awareness of what you are and of what you do; and to you, dear faithful, the grace of approaching the manifestations of God in the liturgy, as Moses did, with reverence and awe.

"If man no longer counts for anything, that is because he no longer sees anything as sacred," said Monsignor Laise.

Society is getting more godless because it has lost its axis, the peg, the fulcrum, the church. The church looks like a whited sepulchre, a facade, a hollow shell, a smoking ruin. The services are shallow not real, profane not sacred, appeasing the world's values and absorbing its soul-destroying cultural forms in accordance with the teachings of the false prophets of the Second Vatican and especially its poisonous heretical document Sacrosanctum Concilium. They sold the sleeping unsuspected bishops a fake renewal.

Instead of the church being the leaven of the world, the world would be the leaven of the church with "inculturation." Churchmen embraced the worldly things as good and downplayed celestial things.

They forgot the central point of Christianity. "Love not the world," said St John, "the whole world is in the power of the evil one," the prince of this world. St Paul called the evil spirits or fallen angels "the rulers of the world of this darkness, the spirits of the air."

It is not a matter of this or that heresy. It is total apostasy, turning upside down and inverting the whole Christian message which is a sign of contradiction to the world. When the world is considered sacred, nothing is.

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out and trodden on by men."

To ban communion in the hand would mean making it obligatory for communicants to kneel and receive Holy Communion on the tongue. Kneeling in pews and at altar rails restores the holiness of the adoration of God. But modern man says, "I will not lower myself by kneeling." One kneels before the king as a mark of respect. The more so should we kneel before the King of kings. We are not God's equal. "He who thinks he can stand let him beware lest he fall."

Sacrilege is so commonplace today that it is no longer recognized as sacrilege. The need for reparation is colossal. To avert God's anger, let a fast be declared, as the people of Nineveh did. "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah and behold a greater than Jonah here."

Saints Who Set Good Example

St Charles Borromeo, while distributing Holy Communion, inadvertently dropped a Sacred Particle from his hand. Having considered himself guilty of grave irreverence, he was so afflicted that he did not have the courage to offer the Holy Mass for four days. As a penance he imposed upon himself an eight day fast.

St Joseph of Copertino once expressed his desire to have another pair of index fingers and thumbs so that he might use them exclusively for holding the Holy Flesh of Jesus.

St Therese of Lisieux saw a small Particle of the Host on the paten after Holy Mass. With the novices, she carried the paten in procession into the sacrist with gracious adoring comportment. The angels must surely have rejoiced over this act of love for our Lord.

St Teresa Margaret who cried when she found a Fragment of the Host on the floor near the altar, feared that such irreverence could be shown to Jesus. But such irreverence is everywhere today. When St Teresa found a Particle, she would kneel in adoration until a priest arrived to take and put It in the tabernacle. The holiness of a saint who knew in whose presence she was!

When St Francis Xavier distributed Holy Communion, he would at times feel himself so carried away by a sense of adoration towards Jesus that he knelt as he continued to give Holy Communion. What faith and love worthy of heaven!

Do Not Touch

Ezekiel the Old Testament prophet received the word of God in a prefiguration of Holy Communion. "And the Lord said to me: But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house. Open your mouth and eat what I give you. And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and lo a written scroll was in it. And He said to me, Son of man, eat what is offered to you. Eat this scroll. And go and speak to the house of Israel. And I opened my mouth, and He caused me to eat that book. And he said to me, Son of man, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey...I am the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it...Israel I would feed with finest wheat and fill them with honey from the rock."

Note that it does not say the prophet stretched out his hand to feed himself but that he opened his mouth. As little children we are to receive the word of God as well as God himself in the Word made flesh in the Eucharist, the bread of doctrine and the Bread come down from Heaven.

Concerning the Ark of the Covenant it was absolutely forbidden to touch it, under pain of death. One poor man, Oza or Uzzah, paid the supreme price for his temerity in reaching out to steady the ark. "When they came to the floor of Machon, Oza put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it because the oxen kicked and made it lean aside. And the indignation of the Lord was enkindled against Oza, and He struck him for his rashness and he died there before the ark of God." But one greater than the Ark of the Covenant is here in the uncorrupted church: God himself incarnate in the blessed Sacrament.

The Lord spoke to Moses from the midst of a bush that was on fire but not burnt, being like the fire everlasting: "Do not come near here, take off the shoes from your feet, for the place in which you are standing is holy ground." During the Exodus the Lord told Moses: "Go down and charge the people lest they should have a mind to pass the limits to see the Lord and a very great multitude of them should perish. The priests also that come to the Lord, let them be sanctified, lest he strike them....Set limits about the mount and sanctify it." The forerunner of the strange sand appeared during that Exodus from Egypt. "And the Lord said to Moses: Behold I will rain bread from heaven for you...That I may prove them whether they will walk in my law or not...And in the morning a dew lay about the camp. And when it had covered the face of the earth, it appeared in the wilderness small...And when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another: Manna? Which means: What is it? For they knew not what it was. And Moses said to them: This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat."

The Day the Host Fell

In former times, before the destructive reform of the church, there was a strict procedure for when a host was dropped. It impressed me at a young age.

The year was around 1965. I was a boy of about 7 years old. My father took me for Sunday Mass to the “Italian parish,” Our Lady of Consolation in Philadelphia. The Mass was still in Latin, the sacred atmosphere still pervaded the church and the liturgy, though the first updrafts of change were in the wind.

During Communion time on this particular Sunday, the priest accidentally dropped a consecrated Host. We were sitting up front, and my father drew my attention to it.

The priest briefly interrupted the distribution of Communion to fetch a small white cloth which he placed over the Host on the floor. The distribution of Holy Communion resumed, with the priest and altar boy carefully stepping around the Veiled Guest.

My father purposely kept me after Mass so that I could see the purification rubric from the front pew. All was done simply, quietly, for there was no talking in church whatsoever back then, in reverence to the Blessed Sacrament.

The priest and the altar boy approached the spot near the altar rail inside the sanctuary, the spot covered with a white cloth. The priest then dropped to his knees, lifted the veil, retrieved the Sacred Species and consumed it with dignity and decorum. Slowly, reverently, still on his knees, he then cleaned and purified the section of the floor where the Host had dropped. He took his time. There was no rush. An air of solemnity, holiness and adoration pervaded his every move.

I was fascinated and edified by the procedure. I remember thinking to myself, “truly, the Sacred Host is the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” because the priest tended to It with awe-inspiring care and reverence. It was the best catechism lesson on the Real Presence I ever had.

What do seven-year-olds now see? In modern parishes, under the lax rubrics of the New Mass, the priest simply picks up a dropped Host and moves on, as if he dropped some loose change. Particles are left to be stepped upon and desecrated.

Before and after Mass, people prattle away in church as if they are socializing in the parish hall. Many modern priests and laity disregard their duty of silence before the Blessed Sacrament.

They forget the stern warning of little Jacinta of Fatima, “Our Lady does not want people to talk in church”.

Where is this reverence and care for the Blessed Sacrament in the post-Conciliar Church with the introduction of Communion in the hand and the “anyone can handle it” attitude?

How will our young people gain any understanding of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament when He receives cavalier treatment from clergymen?

How can reverence for the Eucharist be instilled in the Catholic faithful when they see It given in the hand as common foodstuffs, and distributed by ill-trained lay people who should not be handling the Blessed Sacrament in the first place?

It is no mystery why so many Catholics have lost faith in the Sacred Mysteries. Too many of our priests have abandoned the outward devotion necessary: 1) to give proper reverence to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; 2) to teach the people through example that the highest reverence must be shown to Our Lord Jesus Christ truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.

Yet, the post-Conciliar catastrophe will not go on indefinitely. Someday the Church will once again be blessed with a hierarchy that gives Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament the reverence due to the King of Kings.

In the meantime, let us resist sacrilegious innovations such as Communion in the hand and lay-Eucharistic ministers, encourage others to resist them, and cling to the Latin Tridentine Mass wherein the rubrics that safeguard the reverence to the Blessed Sacrament are meticulously preserved. By John Vennari. Full report cfnews.org/sacrilege.htm and cfnews.org/comhand.htm